Outside, the yard was all day long filled with women either convicted or waiting to be tried: some of them were in prison for short sentences: some were waiting to be whipped: some were waiting for ships to carry them to the plantations: all alike were foul in language; unwashed, uncombed and draggled; rough and coarse and common. Such women, gathered together in one place, make each other worse: they swear like men: they fight like men: they drink like men: their hair hangs loose over their shoulders: the 'loose jumps' of leather which they use for stays are never changed: the ragged kerchief over their shoulders is never washed: the linsey-woolsey frock is foul with every kind of stain: their loud harsh voices have no feminine softness: their red brawny arms terrify the spectator: in their faces, even of the youngest, is no look of Venus. Taken to this place, Jenny had to wait, expectant, for the relief that was promised her by Lord Brockenhurst. Her cheek grew pale and thin: her eyes became unnaturally bright: I feared gaol fever but happily she was spared this dreadful malady. Yet she kept up the appearance of cheerfulness, and greeted me every day with a smile that was never forced, and a grasp that was never chilled. For exercise Jenny had the crowded yard. There, with no one to protect her, she walked a little every morning, the women falling back, right and left, to let her pass. They offered her no molestation. To save her fancy man--so ran the legend--she had compassed the ruin of her old friends: with this object ('twas the only one they could understand) she put up her mother to bear witness against her own customers. Well: it was to save her fancy man--the same came every day to see her in the prison: that was some excuse for her: would not any woman do as much for her man? And now she was herself condemned all through the other woman whose man she had put in prison and in pillory. So far, then, they were quits, and might all become friends again. And they remembered as a point in Jenny's favour that the noble welcome with which the thief-taker was received--a thing at which all Roguery rejoiced--was entirely due to her exertions. These things passed from one to the other clothed in the language peculiar to such people. Jenny took two or three turns in the yard, every morning when the prison air is freshest, and then went back to her cell, where she remained for the rest of the day. In those days she talked to me more freely than before and a great deal about herself. She was forced to talk and to think about herself, for the first time in her life. Her thoughts went back to the past when all she could expect was to become such as the poor creatures with her in the prison. Yet these poor women, whom I found so terrible to look upon and to hear, she regarded with a tenderness which I thought excessive. I now understand that it was more humane than at that time was within my comprehension.